Page 74 of Anomalies

A tear slips down my cheeks when more precious adrenaline wears off, and Callan curses, “Fuck, Lucina, I should have been there.” His shoulders fall, his hands moving so gently over my own as if that will make it hurt less. “I’m so sorry.”

It’s the sincerest apology I’ve ever received, and I’ve had my fair share of them. “You didn’t know.”

“I should have known,” he fires back, a sharpness to his tone that he quickly smothers. “It was a distraction, Lucina. He wanted me to give chase, and I did.”

I stare at him until his eyes meet mine. “I’m okay.”

“Something tells me you’d never admit it if you weren’t,” he says simply, then twists off the lid to the salve. “This is going to hurt, Chaos, but you can handle it.”

I don’t know what that salve is, but I’m not dumb enough to call his bluff.

“Distract me,” I spit out, my voice dry and hoarse.

Callan thinks for a moment, then he uses his free hand to unclip his vest, sliding it off his shoulders. He sets my hand carefully on his knee and reaches for the collar of his shirt, tugging the thin fabric over his head in one quick motion. Then he tosses it to the floor.

I’d curse the gods, but I seem to have forgotten their names.

His chest is tanned, broad, and scarred. Every bit of his torso is chiseled, but I knew it would be. I often catch glimpses of muscles working underneath his shirt during training, but I’d never seen them… bare.

I drink in the distraction, shamelessly, my eyes roaming over all the cut ridges and shallow valleys between each muscle. He watches all of this, but I don’t care, not even as the hint of a smirk plays at his mouth.

“Ready?” he asks, dipping his finger into the salve and inching a bit closer.

I nod, focusing on the distraction, ignoring the sheer audacity he has to assume his bare chest will pull my focus long enough to heal—my eyes fall to more ripples of muscle in his shoulders.

Fuck me, it actually might. For some reason, Ivy’s laughter sounds in the back of my head. She’d have thought this was hilarious, then she would pester me with it until the end of time.

With all the care in the world, Callan pulls my right hand towards him. “They’re called Sol Marks,” he says, and my brows furrow. What? “My father used them. He painted them all around my room when I was a baby.” I hiss through my teeth at the first rub of the salve, the sudden pain jarring me from my calm state, but his words pull me right back into it. “I memorized the shapes of them, and I’d draw them any chance I got.” Callan gestures a salve-covered finger to his torso. “I’d trace them along my skin.”

Holy gods. He hadn’t taken off his shirt just so I’d drool over his abs…

All along his ribs is a tattoo of black circles, marks with various lines and squiggles cutting through each one like its own language. The ink runs up and over his heart, across his left shoulder, and it ends midway down his bicep.

“Those are—” I’m cut off when pain bursts behind my eyes, and my shoulders tense up. He waits patiently as I force down a deep breath.

“I’m good,” I assure him. “Keep talking.” My voice is getting better, but it burns every time I speak, just not nearly as bad as my hands do. Or my knees.

“This is what he painted around my room.” Callan reaches for something else in his kit, and my breaths come steadier as the salve starts mending the broken skin, the sting receding into a dull ache. “After the attack, drawing them was all I did for a while. I wouldn’t speak to anyone; I’d just sit and trace them and wonder if I’d made it all up.” He pauses when I don’t flinch at the next rub of the salve. “You, okay?”

“Mhm,” I nod. “Tell me more.”

He studies me for a moment, then takes a deep breath. “It took years for me to translate them.”

My gaze falls when he points to one just over his heart, a circle with a thin line spiraling around its center.

“This one,” he says, waiting for it to draw all my attention, then he rubs salve on my other hand when I’m good and distracted. I tense briefly through the pain, but it’s not nearly as jarring as before. “It’s called the Draal,” Callan says softly. “It translates to evolving strength. The action of becoming stronger through life.” He blows gently on my other palm, and the thick paste hardens, then he picks up gauze and begins unraveling it.

“What about that one?” I blurt, nodding to a circle near the bottom of his ribs with a narrow oval in the center of it.

I swear he smirks as he wraps a thin layer of gauze over my hand. “Syla Ren,” he replies quietly, then tucks the thin white material in place, setting my freshly bandaged hand back in my lap. “It was my mother’s favorite. My favorite too.”

Of all the Marks on this man’s body, I pick that one. Of course.

This time, when he reaches for my other hand, I give it willingly. The gauze is feather light as he drags it across the hardened salve. “Syla Ren is the mark of storms,” he tells me. “Violent ones. The kind that changes everything and flips the world upside down.” His eyes flicker to mine for a moment. “It’s chaos, Chaos.”

I glare back at him. “So, it’s an insult then? Calling me Chaos. Violent, deadly, and uncontrolled?”

His head shakes once. “Boundless, defiant, and free.”